William Howard Taft (1857 - 1930) was an American lawyer, judge and statesman who served as the 27th President of the United States from 1909 to 1913 and as Chief Justice of the United States from 1921 to 1930. [1] He is the only person to have held both offices. [2] A career jurist by temperament, he had earlier been Solicitor General, a federal appeals judge, civil governor of the Philippines and Secretary of War. [3]
Early life and legal career
Taft was born on 15 September 1857 in Cincinnati, Ohio, into a prominent legal and political family; his father served as Attorney General and Secretary of War. He graduated from Yale College in 1878 and took his law degree at the Cincinnati Law School, entering the Ohio bar in 1880. [1]
He rose quickly through Ohio legal offices, serving as assistant prosecutor and then as a judge of the state superior court. President Benjamin Harrison appointed him Solicitor General of the United States in 1890, and in 1892 he became a judge of the newly created United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, a position he held for eight years and regarded as his ideal employment. [3]
Philippines and the cabinet
In 1900 President William McKinley sent Taft to the Philippines to head a commission establishing civil government after the Spanish-American War, and he became the islands' first civil governor the following year. He organised courts, schools, road building and land reform, and negotiated with the Vatican over church estates. [2]
President Theodore Roosevelt recalled him to Washington as Secretary of War in 1904, a post in which he oversaw construction of the Panama Canal. Roosevelt chose him as his successor, and Taft won the presidency in 1908 against William Jennings Bryan. [1]
Presidency
Taft's administration brought more antitrust prosecutions than Roosevelt's, including the suits that broke up Standard Oil and the American Tobacco Company. It supported the constitutional amendments that authorised a federal income tax and the direct election of senators, strengthened railroad regulation under the Mann-Elkins Act, created a postal savings system and a federal children's bureau, and expanded the civil service. [3]
His diplomacy, known as dollar diplomacy, sought to advance American interests through investment rather than force, with mixed results in Latin America and East Asia. Domestically he lost progressive support: the Payne-Aldrich Tariff of 1909 fell short of the reductions reformers expected, and the Ballinger-Pinchot dispute over conservation policy deepened the rift with Roosevelt. [2]
Roosevelt challenged him for the nomination in 1912 and, on losing it, ran as a Progressive. The divided Republican vote delivered the election to Woodrow Wilson, and Taft finished third. [1]
Chief Justice and legacy
After leaving office Taft taught constitutional law at Yale, served as president of the American Bar Association and co-chaired the National War Labor Board during the First World War. In 1921 President Warren G. Harding appointed him Chief Justice of the United States, the office he had long wanted. [2]
As Chief Justice he proved an effective administrator of the federal judiciary. He secured the Judiciary Act of 1925, which gave the Supreme Court broad discretion over the cases it hears, and campaigned successfully for a building of the Court's own, completed after his death. [3]
Ill health forced his resignation in February 1930, and he died in Washington on 8 March 1930. He was buried at Arlington National Cemetery, the first president to be interred there, and was a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. [1]
